Moments and Musings /005 (Arts Edition)
On art and the importance of making things with your own hands; Margiela during the Hermès years, a spring essentials shopping list, and more
Hello! How are you? I've been working on an essay about health and wellness, but it's taking longer than expected. Outside, the rain persists—a stubborn, grey veil between us and the idea of summer. This week,
's grandmother turned 97, which is the kind of age that suggests survival is itself an art form. It fills me with quiet longing to live not long just, but fully; to wear each year like she does, as a badge of resilient beauty rather than mere passage of time. We brought a strawberry sponge cake, delicious, and improbably delicate. She loved it. In a charming moment of playful mischief, we popped open a bottle of Nozeco, which she happily mistook for sparkling rosé—a small, sweet deception. Presents accumulated. Another cake appeared, courtesy of the care home. Celebration, I'm learning, is less about the gesture and more about the momentary suspension of routine. The TIG project launch consumes us. An upcoming April trip hovers just beyond the immediate horizon. I find myself excited—though excitement might simply be another word for anticipation mixed with a certain restlessness, the kind that arrives with changing seasons.This edition of Moments and Musings offers: thoughts on art and the tactile intimacy of making; prose that traces the tentative awakening of springtime; an essentials shopping list curated with deliberate care; and a considered exploration of Margiela during his transformative years at Hermès.
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STYLE FILE /the blazer for spring
The blazer‘s journey began in the 1800s aboard the HMS Blazer, where the ship’s captain outfitted his crew in navy double-breasted jackets with brass buttons for a visit from Queen Victoria. These distinctive uniforms earned the name “blazer” for their bright appearance and the ship they represented.
By the late 19th century, blazers had transitioned from nautical uniforms to sporting attire at prestigious British universities and rowing clubs, often featuring bright colours and club insignias. The early 20th century saw blazers evolve into a symbol of leisure and status, worn at tennis matches and seaside resorts by the upper class.
MUSINGS /on springtime
“The beautiful spring came; and when Nature resumes her loveliness, the human soul is apt to revive also”, Harriet Beecher Stowe once wrote—a truth we rehearse annually, with all the hope of memory. Spring arrives laden with sentiment, stealing into the landscape like a long-forgotten promise: bare branches trembling with possibility, pale green shoots breaking through cold earth with a kind of profound quietness.
There is a delicacy to this awakening—soft, almost fragile in its dismantling of winter's long stillness. Patches of frost dissolve at the edges, giving way to light, while sunlight illuminates the first tentative blossoms. This is a season of unbridled hope: raw and beautiful, existing in the luminous space between what has been endured and what might, wonderfully, be renewed.
SHOPPING /spring essentials
